August 22, 2013

Fox News' Ed Henry jumped into the Chris Lane case that conservatives have been desperately trying exploit as a racist crime against a white man and asked Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest why President Obama hadn't commented on it yet. By the way, Henry is ill-informed because three African Americans didn't allegedly perpetrate the shooting. That's the danger of getting your news from Fox. There was one white teenager involved and race had nothing to do with their motive, but the case is very new and even Earnest didn't know what it was.

Henry: Do you have any reaction to the Christopher Lane case?

Earnest: I'm not familiar with that actually.

Henry: In Oklahoma, this twenty two year old Australian...baseball player came from Australia and was targeted apparently by three African American young men who..the Australian was out on a job and these young men apparently told the police, ummm, they were bored and they thought it would be fun to kill him. Any reaction to that?

Earnest: Well this sounds like a pretty tragic case. I wouldn't want to get ahead of the legal process here and it's clear that law enforcement officials are involved and investigating. Any act of violence is something that... the President, I think, himself has spoken pretty eloquently about violence in our communities...the impact violence is having on young people in the country.

Henry: Yeah, but we heard about Trayvon Martin here and in the Rose Garden. Why hasn't he spoken out on this in this instance? There was a judicial proceeding on the Trayvon Martin case, he spoke out extensively on that one.

Earnest: I'm not sure, but think there's some people in this room that wouldn't agree with you that the President spoke extensively on it. I think that he answered...

Henry: It was in the Rose Garden and he spoke on it.

Earnest: He got asked a question about it.

Henry: He didn't have to answer it but he did.

Earnest: ...and then he came out here himself and shared some thoughts I think where he expressed his concerns about the impact of violence in communities all across the country and he talked about a number of things that he government can do and also things that we can do in our communities. Parents, churches and communities can do to try and address the impact of violence and where there's more that we can do to protect out children.

Conservatives like Henry, who is the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, are trying so hard to link up this tragic murder to the Trayvon Martin case as a role reversal of sorts that he doesn't even know who was supposedly involved in the crime. Henry should be embarrassed that he got the story wrong, but as head of the White House Correspondents’ Association, he knows that this was a bogus question to ask because all he was trying to do was throw fuel on a possibly very ugly fire. Also the Martin story took off because George Zimmerman was not initially charged with a crime. People saw that an unarmed black teenager was dead all because he was profiled by Zimmerman who instigated the entire confrontation and yet walked away without a real investigation. That caused an outrage and it should have, but for the right to try to exploit the tragic death of Chris Lane, without even knowing the details of the case, is sickening.

Also President Obama--or any president for that matter--doesn't need to or should be expected to comment on every tragic death that happens in America unless certain circumstances arise. The only people demanding answers so soon in this case weren't even qualified to ask the questions.

(h/t Heather for the video)

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